


Gracious Gift

by pega



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 16:59:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17881688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pega/pseuds/pega
Summary: Five and Vanya through the years, how Vanya got her name, and why Five never did.





	Gracious Gift

When Five is, well, five, he asks Father why Seven is left alone so often. The answer he receives from Reginald Hargreeves is unsatisfactory, to say the least.

 

“Your sister is ordinary, I’m afraid.”

 

Five removes the comma, and the obvious lie, and is left with the obvious truth. Father is afraid of his sister. Father is ignoring reality, and it bothers Five, it itches at him like an unsolved problem, because it’s so colossally stupid. 

 

“Seven. Hey, Number Seven.” He stands in the doorway of her sparse bedroom. She’s sitting on the rug, staring blankly at the wall, dull in a way that she never was before Grace started putting pills in her oatmeal. Five has read the child psychology books Father keeps in his study, the leather bound ones that are decades out of fashion, but despite their age, they still say that a five year old should be playful and creative. Not content to stare at bland wallpaper for hours and hours at a time.

 

Seven even blinks slowly now. “Hello, Five. I feel sleepy.” 

 

“Hello.” He’s not sure what to say, how to fix this. Number One is technically going to be their leader, will be their leader once they start doing whatever it is they’ve been adopted to do, but Five knows himself. He knows that his brain is working differently, knows that his ability to jump is less a random trait and more the product of a different relationship to time and space. But he can’t bridge this gap between who Seven was a few months ago and who she is now. “Seven, why aren’t you allowed to play with us anymore?”

 

“I’m ordinary.” There’s that word again, and it makes Five clench up at the audacity of it all. None of them are ordinary, because ordinary is less children, a smaller house, and school, not tutors and obstacle courses and seven children in a mansion. But he doesn’t know what words to use to convince Seven that she’s not ordinary, but she is wrong, and that’s worse.

 

Five steps over the threshold of Seven’s room. “I like you anyway. So let me play with you.”

 

~~~

 

When Five is ten, he gets obsessed trying to find their birth certificates. He knows how adoption works now, and he knows that somewhere, they have real names and not numbers.

 

While the rest of them are growing up louder and bigger than before, Seven is shrinking. Five thinks this could be helpful, so he has her stand guard while he tries to break into Father’s office. 

 

“Five, why are you doing this?” She sighs, already dejected before Five has even put his improvised lock picks to the test. 

 

He sighs back, because no one ever listens to him. “They don’t let people name kids after numbers. We have real names, and I want to know mine.”

 

Seven frowns. “No, why are you having me help? I can’t do anything.”

 

They’re all going to grow up with complexes, aren’t they. “You can be underestimated.” Seven doesn’t seem to find it funny, her brow furrowing like she’s working it into her already fragile psyche, so he changes tracks. “You’re kind, and I like being around you. You aren’t gross or annoying. And you would be able to make a good guard, if you stay focused.” 

 

It takes Five ten minutes to pick the lock, and three to find the file with their birth records. Father tries to come back into the office around minute eleven, but Seven does a fantastic job bursting into tears about some fight she had with Three that sounds almost real. It slows Father down enough for Five to get out. 

 

It turns out when you buy children off of desperate women, they let you put down whatever you want for their information.

 

Seven and Three don’t get any dessert, and if Three could throw daggers half as well as Two, Five knows he and Seven would both be dead right now. 

 

He saves half of his ice cream for Seven, and when he brings it to her room, she smiles like it isn’t even runny.

 

~~~

 

When they all turn twelve, Five offers to name everyone else. He’s been on a nomenclature kick, and he’s no good at crafts like Three and Four. 

 

One becomes Luther, the perfect soldier.

 

Two becomes Diego, the steady handed second.

 

Three becomes Allison, the blurred line between truth and lies.

 

Four becomes Klaus, a community builder and bringer and shaker. 

 

Six becomes Ben, loyal and loving and better than the rest of them.

 

Seven becomes Vanya, the gift, and if Five thinks he could have gotten away with just naming her and having the others accept it, he would have done it. Because she deserves something special, to know that she’s something special, even if she’s without powers. 

 

Five tells Vanya in private that she’ll get to name him, once she thinks of the right one. She nods, serious as ever, but looking a little lighter now that she has a name.

 

She never gets the chance to give him a name.

 

He keeps his name as Five, even when he’s years into a time travel contract, because he promised. Because Vanya gets to do this for him, or no one else does. Five will continue to eke out any drop of special favor he can offer to his sister, because that’s what family does. They see you for more than you see yourself. And he sees her and all her gifts.


End file.
